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4/21/5 technically works but it is slower and less secure than other options. The problem is that by killing creeps slower you invalidate the defensive gains at least as far as jungle sustainability goes.

Ardor is not that significant beyond activating passives. At 300 AP you get a whopping 12 additional AP for it. If you're looking for late game damage a single point in Archaic Knowledge is better than full Ardor unless the entire enemy team refuses to build MR.

Strictly speaking, it is *possible*. But just because it's possible doesn't mean it's a good idea. You need the runes and masteries to activate her passives at lvl 1, and get the exp bonus, and the survivability.

Akali is one of the less forgiving jungles. I think I did it as low as lvl 25 successfully. It wasn't fast, and it wasn't pretty. When I finished the runepage and hit lvl 30, it got sooo much easier to do so effectively.

Two questions/comments:
1. Does Akali's E delay her auto-attack? I've never tested it so I can't say for sure, but it really really feels like it does, and I've taken to waiting to use it until directly after an auto-attack. It also feels like Q delays the auto-attack very slightly. This is something that really annoys me, but I have never seen it mentioned anywhere and I figure the jungle thread is the best place to ask because it's more 'controlled' than laning and is the place where that extra half second or so between attacks is going to matter the most.

2. I pretty much always use the same path; golems, wraiths, wolves, blue, invade enemy jungle. I almost always am able to catch the enemy jungler at either wraiths, golems, or most likely, lizard and do a significant amount of damage to them/kill them with just a level 3 burst combo and ignite. If I don't find them, I'll just steal a camp or two. However, I sometimes have a problem, and that is if the enemy mid and bot/top (depending on which side I'm on) actually have map awareness and come to help their jungler when I show up.
Any advice on dealing with this? Is this invasion too high risk for too low reward? Are there escape paths I'm not considering? At more competitive levels, will the other lanes actually have enough map awareness to continually foil this plan (say, they come to help ~70% of the time rather than ~5% of the time)?
In ultra rare cases, the lanes coming to help will be too low from dealing with their own lanes and do not suspect a Q->auto-attack burst when facechecking a bush and I can end up getting 2-3 kills, most of the time if lanes come to help though, I just do a little bit of damage and then die.

Two questions/comments:
1. Does Akali's E delay her auto-attack? I've never tested it so I can't say for sure, but it really really feels like it does, and I've taken to waiting to use it until directly after an auto-attack. It also feels like Q delays the auto-attack very slightly. This is something that really annoys me, but I have never seen it mentioned anywhere and I figure the jungle thread is the best place to ask because it's more 'controlled' than laning and is the place where that extra half second or so between attacks is going to matter the most.

2. I pretty much always use the same path; golems, wraiths, wolves, blue, invade enemy jungle. I almost always am able to catch the enemy jungler at either wraiths, golems, or most likely, lizard and do a significant amount of damage to them/kill them with just a level 3 burst combo and ignite. If I don't find them, I'll just steal a camp or two. However, I sometimes have a problem, and that is if the enemy mid and bot/top (depending on which side I'm on) actually have map awareness and come to help their jungler when I show up.
Any advice on dealing with this? Is this invasion too high risk for too low reward? Are there escape paths I'm not considering? At more competitive levels, will the other lanes actually have enough map awareness to continually foil this plan (say, they come to help ~70% of the time rather than ~5% of the time)?
In ultra rare cases, the lanes coming to help will be too low from dealing with their own lanes and do not suspect a Q->auto-attack burst when facechecking a bush and I can end up getting 2-3 kills, most of the time if lanes come to help though, I just do a little bit of damage and then die.

1. Q, W, and E all delay Akali's auto attack. Her auto attacking animation will be interrupted and delayed until the casting animation has finished.

2. The risk involved in this type of invasion is heavily dependent on the state of the game, who the enemy jungler is, your summoner spells, and the coordination of both teams. For example, the choice of Ignite means you're much more likely to kill the enemy jungler when you attack, but it also means you don't have an escape mechanism afterward.

If you kill the enemy jungler but enemies are incoming your goal is to either escape cleanly or force as many favorable confrontations as possible. That means not waiting around for a 1v2 to destroy you, but either running to an unorthodox location to recall or directly at the enemy you have the best chance of beating 1v1 or 2v1 with a nearby ally.

When it's clear escape is unlikely or impossible or that confrontations might cost you not just your life but your allies' the best thing to do is suicide on a tower. You lose jungle time, but so did the enemy jungler when you killed him. In most cases you'll also have eliminated one or more of their jungle buffs, which is a huge advantage for you as blue buff is only marginally useful for Akali early on.

What you really want is a support to CV the area right after you kill blue so you can have the information necessary to determine whether it's worth attempting. There are some enemy junglers who, if played properly, simply won't be bothered by you trying this.

other than that, been testing your runebuilds and such over on the eu servers, just wanted to ask why you dont go 5x ap flat 4x ap/lvl (with 3 ap quints and 3/3 savvy) seeing as that brings you over 20 ap and gives you slightly better scaling!

also just for fun i decided to try attackspeed seals instead of armor, to procc the extra damage passive a bit more, finding that it works quite well if you want to have some extra damage. of course, i dont know how this would affect you being ganked by/ganking enemy junglers as i havent come across that yet!

It's been a while since I tested 9xFlat AP vs 5xFlat and 4xAP/Lvl. I believe there were some edge case creep kills where it took an additional auto-attack for the latter over the former. Again, it's been a while so that's something you should double-check before taking my hazy recollection as gospel.

When dropping Armor Seals remember that if you have to recall before you gank due to low health that's an extra 20-40 seconds before you arrive at a lane. That's time the enemy spent leveling and harassing your allies. The armor also makes it harder to kill you while you gank, which is a very real threat.